With The Hunter, Mastodon are out of their element. Or rather out of elements. Fortunately, after releasing albums loosely themed about fire, water, earth, and air, the Georgia quartet ignored Metalstormers' pleas for a Captain Planet album to tie it all together.

So as for the new album, the immediate TL;DR is this: If you were expecting Leviathan 2.0 or Remission MMXII, you'll likely be disappointed. If you were cool with Crack The Skye, it's a safe bet you will enjoy this one as well.

Not a single song I didn't like, awesomeness all over, some rather experimental songs, interesting lyrics, great production, fun, hook, heavy, soft, prog, vocal harmonies all over...
This album is great, now I have another candidate for best of the year.

Agree! ...Totally...this could be my favorite album of all time too! ...In my opinion, it's in my top 20 already! ...I think it is my favorite by these days! Mastodon, you're one of my favorite bands!

I agree, they are aware of it themself to, they talked about it in an interview after crack the sky. they said i is realy good to imitate famous vocalists. But i think the ozzyish vocal comes pretty natural to him.. sounds cool:)

I agree, they are aware of it themself to, they talked about it in an interview after crack the sky. they said i is realy good to imitate famous vocalists. But i think the ozzyish vocal comes pretty natural to him.. sounds cool:)

Oh really?, I honestly didn't know that, if you have a link for that interview it would be nice to post it here.

I agree, they are aware of it themself to, they talked about it in an interview after crack the sky. they said i is realy good to imitate famous vocalists. But i think the ozzyish vocal comes pretty natural to him.. sounds cool:)

Oh really?, I honestly didn't know that, if you have a link for that interview it would be nice to post it here.

When i first heard the hunter, i was captivated by how much this album sounded almost like the vacation the band needed after the "virtuosity" of crack the skye (which i kind of saw echoed in the stage presence they had in the CtS songs during that tour/Live at the Aragon, a little too focused on their jangly guitar bits to have a real fucking rock out). I'm waiting to see them next February at Soundwave festival, and i can just imagine the field day the guys are gonna have just riffing along to Octopus or Bone Dry Valley.... Can't wait! It's something completely different, but to me it fits in their musical progression, and i still love listening to the catalogue front to back on long drives with The Hunter to cap it all off! So yeah, to me it just honestly feels like what the guys wanted to do after so meticulously shaping Crack the Skye. Curl of the Burl's lyrics, for example, aren't really veiled that much at all and brent really feels like he's connecting to the song (second verse especially). Damn, I'm going to go listen to The Hunter right now.

P.S. Spectrelight is an absolute steamroller, thrashy and destructive and sure to be a Mother Puncher-esque hellraiser live! MERSTODERN!

I love this album, and I'm glad they didn't try to out-prog Crack The Skye. The songs are infectiously catchy but still retain the impeccable musicianship and unique, progressive songwriting of their older material. I couldn't really call it a Black Album for this reason; the songs are catchy, but the album still takes risks and experiments with different sounds and styles. I fucking hate The Creature Lives though.

Such an unbalanced album unfortunately. A poor first 23 minutes to the album full of aimless prog without direction. The remanding 30 minutes were more or less great highlighted by a closing track featuring some beautiful shoegaze like ambient vocals.

'Mastodon sounding like Alcest' is a much different mindset to 'a very very small part of the final track reminded me of Alcest'. The latter is what I felt. I'm sorry if my allegedly ludicrous 'comparison' leads to any negative feelings towards Mastodon. Don't take what I said literally

'Mastodon sounding like Alcest' is a much different mindset to 'a very very small part of the final track reminded me of Alcest'. The latter is what I felt. I'm sorry if my allegedly ludicrous 'comparison' leads to any negative feelings towards Mastodon. Don't take what I said literally

More like "positive feelings" i''d totally give mastodon a chance if they did shoegaze stoner metal. xD
Now that you mention it I read only the part where you said "reminded me of Alcest" without reading the context, but after i read everything it became clear.

'Mastodon sounding like Alcest' is a much different mindset to 'a very very small part of the final track reminded me of Alcest'. The latter is what I felt. I'm sorry if my allegedly ludicrous 'comparison' leads to any negative feelings towards Mastodon. Don't take what I said literally

More like "positive feelings" i''d totally give mastodon a chance if they did shoegaze stoner metal. xD
Now that you mention it I read only the part where you said "reminded me of Alcest" without reading the context, but after i read everything it became clear.

Okay, you guys are crazy. He said the vocals on The Sparrow remind him of shoegaze, specifically Alcest, and yes, those vocals would fit in a shoegaze song quite well even though the song itself isn't shoegaze or anything close to Alcest. There was absolutely nothing about Mastodon being anything like Alcest aside from the vocals on the one song, and absolutely nothing about their being any shoegaze on the album, just some vocals. The vocals don't remind me of Alcest, though I haven't listened to any Alcest recently, but to each their own.

Okay, you guys are crazy. He said the vocals on The Sparrow remind him of shoegaze, specifically Alcest, and yes, those vocals would fit in a shoegaze song quite well even though the song itself isn't shoegaze or anything close to Alcest. There was absolutely nothing about Mastodon being anything like Alcest aside from the vocals on the one song, and absolutely nothing about their being any shoegaze on the album, just some vocals. The vocals don't remind me of Alcest, though I haven't listened to any Alcest recently, but to each their own.

Thank you. Finally someone brings a bit of sense to the discussion and puts the original comment in its true perspective. Cool closing song for mine. Haven't heard any Alcest so can't comment on the similarity with the vocal style. "Shoegaze" sounds pretty funny.

Thank you. Finally someone brings a bit of sense to the discussion and puts the original comment in its true perspective. Cool closing song for mine. Haven't heard any Alcest so can't comment on the similarity with the vocal style. "Shoegaze" sounds pretty funny.

I don't see how you can judge whether he brought "a bit of sense to the discussion" when you haven't heard any Alcest. You don't really know if the comparison is apt or not, and you're literally taking somebody else's word for it instead of investigating it yourself. Without knowledge of the band, you don't realize the true import of the claim the OP is trying to make and just how ludicrous it is. Some ideas are just ridiculous, and that's perfectly reasonable. Confronting these ideas leads to a discussion that can help other listeners so as not to betray the essence of what Mastodon is actually doing.

I also don't think anyone really deferred away from the "true perspective" of the original comment. They simply treated it as it should be addressed: with ridicule.

I don't see how you can judge whether he brought "a bit of sense to the discussion" when you haven't heard any Alcest. You don't really know if the comparison is apt or not, and you're literally taking somebody else's word for it instead of investigating it yourself. Without knowledge of the band, you don't realize the true import of the claim the OP is trying to make and just how ludicrous it is. Some ideas are just ridiculous, and that's perfectly reasonable. Confronting these ideas leads to a discussion that can help other listeners so as not to betray the essence of what Mastodon is actually doing.

I also don't think anyone really deferred away from the "true perspective" of the original comment. They simply treated it as it should be addressed: with ridicule.

hahahaha, you probably have a point. Never listened to Alcest in my life, so how the hell would I know? Nothing like a bit of genre and sub-genre discussion to draw out wild and unfounded accusations. To be honest, I find the whole thing a bit boring. I don't really care for what people classify a certain band or album to be.